Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 30

"Good water," he said, watching her drink. Amaryllis smiled on him as she finished, and plunged into the ample pocket of Mrs. Brundage's skirt for her chocolate. She broke off a lump and gave him the cup to fill once more.

"It's lovely water," she said, munching; then poured out half the water he had given her. "But I'm going to spoil yours," she went on, and poured in brandy till the cup almost brimmed. "Just obey meekly for once."

"That's easy," said d.i.c.k.

"For brandy, or for me?" asked the girl.

But d.i.c.k was drinking.

"Now lie down along the ledge. Be quick. I can't enjoy my chocolate till you do."

He looked at her with heavy eyes.

"I must," he said. "The brandy's finished me."

Without rising, he drew up his legs to the terrace level, stretched them out, said: "Wake me, if the chocolate makes you sleepy," and rolled full length on his left side.

"Lift your head a little, and I'll spread a bit of my skirt under it.

There's plenty of it," said Amaryllis, shifting towards him as she sat.

She got no answer. He was dead asleep.

Five minutes she gave him to sink deeper into the unknown, while she hovered above his dreams like a seagull over the course of a stream which has disappeared into a tunnel.

At last she lifted his head and drew a fold of her skirt beneath it; but was not yet content; for she knew the weariness of lying on the side when the unsupported neck and heavy head increase the pressure on the under shoulder. So once more, to slip her knee beneath the neck for a pillow, she raised the head--and there came to her heart and breath a flutter which seemed to make its attack through fingers and up the arms.

She felt, with a difference, the strong, subtle, ineffable thrill of a woman's early handlings of her earliest child.

In spite of her terror in the night, her danger of the early morning, the men fighting and the man dead; in spite of the excitement and risks of the afternoon, shaking the heart in relief only less than in encounter, and in spite of aching head and limbs, stiffening to cramp while she still sat and the man still slept, Amaryllis knew herself happier than ever in her life before.

Not rejoicing in the future--neither in hope nor in fear of what the sleeper might feel, what ask for, when danger was behind him and fighting once more a splendid thing belonging to newspapers and books; instinctively aware, perhaps, that his spirit had moved already half-way to meet hers, yet so far from asking, even of her own mind, whether d.i.c.k Bellamy loved her or no, that she did not even mentally formulate the idea of love to explain her own feelings, Amaryllis sat in blissful, unphilosophic enjoyment of service and protection.

Was she not at once his pillow and his defence? Was he not sleeping like a little child whose fever has abated? And had she not a dog's ears and a sailor's eyes for his enemies? And did she not know just where to lay her hand on the b.u.t.t of Ockley's pistol, how precious were its two cartridge's, and how near, therefore, to use each with effect, she must let an enemy approach?

She was happy, then, and time was nothing, until the man's head moved on her numbed thigh, and a deep sigh came from his chest.

She leaned over him and lifted the lock of straight black hair which had fallen over the left eye, stroking it back as he would have brushed it, and murmuring, "Lie still, dear, lie still," in just such words and tones as some day she would use to a smaller man on a softer pillow.

But the instinct of the man of many wilds had told him that his hour's rest was over.

He sighed again, turned on his back, and opened his eyes.

He saw her face hanging over him--upside down, it seemed. Yet even inverted, and seen through the mists of sleep, that face conveyed something which he did not understand, something so strange that he caught his breath, gasping, and blundered to his feet.

The girl still sat, looking up at him.

"What is it?" he asked, sharply.

But Amaryllis had forgotten herself altogether, and did not know that he found his wonder in her face.

"What is what?" she asked, simply.

"Your face----" he began, and could find no more words.

"My face," she echoed, puzzled, and feeling blindly for a handkerchief.

"It's all right, isn't it?"

"It's glorious--shining with happiness," he answered, his voice sounding like that of a man in pain.

"Weren't you glad," asked Amaryllis, "when you'd got me off to sleep, and when I woke up all alive again? I know it didn't make you look anything but stern and pre-occupied and business-like; I felt as if you were pleased, though. I'm different, and show things in my face, I suppose."

"But you were looking like that when I opened my eyes."

"Well?" said Amaryllis.

"You hadn't had time to know whether I was well or ill, strong or weak.

And you looked as if it had been there a long time."

"What?" she asked again.

"The--the expression," said d.i.c.k, his tone as fierce as his words were lame.

Very sweetly, and with no taint of derision in the sweetness, Amaryllis laughed.

"The gloriousness? I'd been watching you all the time, you see, and I knew it was doing you lots of good--and--and I was proud of being useful, perhaps. So, of course I looked happy and shining."

"When did you take my head on your knees?" he asked, sternly.

But this time she understood every furrow of his frown.

"As soon as you were asleep," she answered.

He looked at his watch. It was four o'clock.

"And I never moved?" he asked.

"No."

"Nor you?"

"No, d.i.c.k."

"An hour and a quarter! My G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "you must be as stiff as a pious book. And I'm d.a.m.ned if you're not sitting there because you can't get up!"

"Oh, yes, I could. But give me a hand," she answered; and he pulled her to her feet.

She staggered, and he caught her by an elbow.

"One of them's as fast asleep as you were," she said. "It'll go off in a minute."